Hello commanders!

Today, at 14:00 CEST we will apply a balance patch to PTS (Bermuda).
There's no maintenance needed as the patch will be adjusting only some Lifeforms values.

Intro
Before we go deeper into the different aspect of the current balance changes, we would like to thank all players for the massive amount of feedback & input we have received in the last weeks from the PTS. Everyone who put time and effort into testing on the PTS helped us to vastly improve the update further and we are very grateful for all the dedication that players are showing. With the current changes we would like to address some of the feedback and narrow down the Lifeform to its final values which would be applied to the live release once we are ready. Please note that there are potential further changes if topics come up from the community that need to be addressed.





Production benefit related buildings and Lifeform technologies
For production related benefits there were a couple of changes. First, we equalized the cost scaling to 1.5 for all buildings and technologies. The main reason is that players will still receive powerful benefits with lower investments but the benefits don´t scale as well into late game creating a more balanced cost / investment ratio even with higher investments. For production related Lifeform buildings, we increase the benefit per level and for production related techs the overall benefit per level has been slightly reduced. This change should bring building and tech benefits more in line with each other. Additional changes we implemented are that production related buildings now have an energy cost added to them.


To compensate the increased energy needs we removed & replaced an “all resource production” tech from Rock´tal and replaced it with an “increased energy production” tech. This should help players to compensate for the increased energy needs of the production buildings across all Lifeforms and goes in line with the reduction for production benefits we were aiming for.


Detailed change:

• Rock´tal slot 7 “all production tech” removed
  
• Rock´tal slot 1 “metal production tech” moved to slot 7
  
• Rock´tal slot 1 “increased energy production tech” added
  

Ship combat technologies & defense
All technologies which would further improve ship combat strength have had 2 changes. The base value of the tech has been increased from 0.2 to 0.3 and the cost scaling has been increased to 1.5. Like the changes for resources, we want players to have a more significant improvement in the earlier stages while scaling the technology should be harder. Additionally, the base cost for all combat ship techs have been equalized. Similar changes were also done to the defense related technology. Since defense only has one technology that improves all defenses, we settled for the approach that defense technology will scale less strong then combat technology but will not have directly double the base value. Overall, this should lead to a situation where equal investments for both kinds of technology should result in relatively the same power where players who go for ship combat strength will have to decide if they specialize more in the direction of destroying defense or fleet vs. fleet combat.




Ship speed minor change
We decided to exclude Deathstar from the ship speed technology. The intention behind this change was that we didn´t want to have moon destruction being speed up further and additionally allow players to invest into this tech without having to change habits regarding fleet saving. The description text for this technology will be updated at a later point to include this information.




Slot 17 & Slot 18 technology changes
With the current balance change the 17^th and 18^th technology for the Rock´tal, Mecha and Kaelesh have been switched. Class benefit technology is now a slot 18 technology and all combat research related technologies (weapon, shield and armor tech) are now slot 17.




Conversion buildings time reduction
We also looked at the build time scaling for several buildings. While players can always invest into Nanite or Robotics to reduce the overall build time we felt that the increase for the “conversion buildings” (example Human: Academy of Sciences & Neuro-Calibration Centre) were too high and have been reduced.




Further notes
The above changes only mention the most important changes. All detailed changes for all values can be found in the excel file above. Additionally, there are 2 open topics for us where we will keep working on. All buildings on our PTS/QA system that give a bonus to the species tech tree currently don’t apply their bonus correctly. This is something we are working on and potentially in the future will do more changes to the bonus or scaling of those buildings. Another topic is fuel reduction. We know how important it is to not get to 100% fuel reduction with all technologies and server settings stacked on top. However currently fuel reduction is not working as intended on our PTS/QA system which makes it difficult to find the right balance. After this issue has been resolved there are potentially further changes to fuel reduction.




Final words
We are very honored by the community involvement on the Public Test Server and the overall input that was provided to make this update the best possible. With the balancing update on our Public Test Server we will also send out another wave of Dark Matter for players to further build up and test all features of the upcoming Lifeform Update. We hope that the changes reflect the feedback and wishes that players have communicated to us so far, as the developers work to fix issues and balance various mechanics introduced with these features. We will keep monitoring how players interact with the Lifeform update and the feedback that is provided, while everyone discovers new ways how to further improve his empire, and further improve it on the way as long as the PTS phase is ongoing.




Kind regards,
Your OGame Team

Afgelopen vrijdag is de versie 9.0.0-rc2 live gegaan op de testserver bermuda.

Changelog:

- Fixed Intergalactic Envoys not giving the correct speed increase to discovery missions.
- Fixed an issue that did not allow you to abandon a planet in some cases.
- Fixed Planetary Shield protecting more population than it should.
- Fixed the fuel consumption being too low on game rounds with the reduced fuel consumption setting active.
- Fixed the time to tear down lifeform buildings not being correct.
- Fixed an issue with the highscore decrease being too high when abandoning a planet.
- Fixed an issue with starting lifeform technologies with Dark Matter.
- Fixed Kaelesh Discoverer Enhancement not giving the correct bonus values.
- Fixed multiple planet's Orbital Den values not stacking correctly.
- Fixed planets and banners showing up below the highscore on new accounts.
- Fixed the behaviour of lifeform technology improvements not working correctly.
- Fixed a portion of ships being instantly built when the Ship Manufacturing Hall was pushing the required building time below 1 second.
- Fixed lifeform queues not working correctly after leaving vacation mode.
- Improved the loading times of each page. This should have a greater effect on accounts with a high amount of planets.
- Fixed Rock’tal Collector Enhancement not giving the correct bonus values.
- Fixed building queues not allowing to put the Robotics Factory and Nanite Factory in the queue while lifeform buildings are being built.
- Fixed players being unable to deactivate their lifeforms while discovery missions are ongoing.
- Fixed the population capacity being higher than it should be in some cases.

Ahoy!


Today, Thursday, 30th of June, at 14:00 CEST we will update PTS (Bermuda) to version 9.0.0-rc5.

Changelog:
- Fixed a bug where Terraformer showed a hatched icon when you had reduction through Lifeform tech
- Fixed a bug where the Den Capacity tech from humans didn't stack properly with several planets
- Fixed a bug where there was a "Start with DM" button in Lifeform techs despite a full queue
- Fixed a bug where tabbing through resources in Fleet didn't work correctly
- Fixed a bug where you couldn't open research on another planet while the research lab was upgrading
- Fixed a bug where the Collector Bonus tech didn't work correctly

July 8^th - 3^rd Balance Patchnotes

Intro
Dear commanders,
we are closing in on the end of the PTS phase for the OGame Lifeforms update. Today’s balancing patch will be the last fine tuning before the update will be applied to a live server. The team would like to use this special moment to thank all players who greatly supported us in developing this update further with their input and ideas. We have seen a lot of interesting discussions throughout the forums and our official OGame discord which led to quite a few changes. With this community letter we would not like to only communicate the current changes that were done, but also give a short overview of all the changes that were done due to the amazing feedback we received as well as share some insight into our future plans. But before we get there lets shortly discuss the current changes.


Rock´tal building - Advanced Recycling Plant (building 12)
Before we go into the changes lets share some light into how the building specifically works. If a player has this building on his planet and gets attacked by someone and within this attack a debris field is created, this building will take a % of the debris field and moves the resources back to the planet. The resources which are withdrawn by the building are removed from the debris field. This effect only occurs if a fight happens on the planet, not on the moon. Further if reapers are in the attacking fleet, they will take resources out of the debris field before the building would take them. The general design idea behind the building is that defensive oriented players get further options to make attacks less interesting or lucrative. While the building shines the most in combination with a high defensive setup, we agree that the building cuts into the win margin of fleeters who catch people off guard. To find a compromise solution we implemented the following change and will further monitor how this building will work out in the live service:

Changes:

• Maximum bonus limit reduced from 40% to 30%
  
• Cost scaling of the building increased from 1,3 to 1,5
  
• Energy scaling of the building increased from 1,07 to 1,1
  
• Building bonus per level reduced from 0,8 to 0,6

Kaelesh building - Supra Refractor (building 12)
This building increases the chance that a moon is created as well as the moon size. As players correctly noted in the beginning this building had the option to increase the moon size to 10.000km and plus which would influence the moon destruction chance in an unintended way. As a measure to reduce the overall power of the building we decided to apply the increase for moon size only to the minimum moon size, but this overall did lead to a result where the building was not interesting. After some discussions we decided to alter the building once more to return to its former strength but without giving moons that were not intended. Therefore, a global limit for moon size has been implemented which is currently set to 9.400km compared to the current maximum moon size of 8.944km.

Changes:

• Building base costs doubled
  
• Building cost scaling increased from 1,3 to 1,4
  
• Building energy cost scaling increased from 1,03 to 1,05
  
• Building bonus per level reduced from 1 to 0,5
  
• Building bonus limit reduced from 50%to 30%

Additional changes:

• Lifeform techs which reduce the fuel consumption of ships (Efficiency Module & Heat Recovery) have had their bonus per level reduced from 0,05 to 0,03 and cost scaling increased from 1,4 to 1,5
  

Those were the last changes for now for the PTS version of the OGame Lifeforms update. Please note that balancing and development is an ongoing process. Even after the release of Lifeforms we will monitor the impact of the new update and what feedback players provide and potentially alter and adapt content. We therefore encourage every player to keep up with the discussions and feedback. Every feedback and discussion are a great help and a further step in the direction to improvements to OGame.




This leads us to the next part which we wanted to highlight. Due to the amount of feedback that we received from players a lot of changes were done. Beside the already communicated balancing changes that mostly come from player discussions and feedback we also had feature requests that were added or potentially will be added in the future. We would like to share some of the changes that stood out.

Features that already made it into the current PTS version:

• Majority of balancing changes were done based on community feedback and input
  
• Overview of all Lifeform related bonus value which come from building and tech. Players should now have an easy overview of how much bonuses are applied to the planet their currently on.
  
• We updated the information tooltip for Lifeforms and food production with additional information that were requested by players
  
• Several cases where we altered and updated text descriptions
  
• Updated the Lifeform tutorial part

Upcoming additions to the Lifeforms update (post release) based on community input:

• Changes on how Lifeform experience is earned. We will implement daily limits with a catch-up mechanic if you miss days, scale the experience flatter, and therefore allow more levels with reducing the bonus gained per level. Additionally, a total limit for the bonus gained from leveling Lifeforms
  
• Updates to the 0,5 fuel consumption server setting to work properly with the Lifeforms fuel reductions
  
• Changes to combat expeditions debris field. The debris field server setting will be updated and will apply the limit as intended
  
• Update of phalanx report to display ship speed of the slowest ship with all lifeform tech modifiers included
  

This is just a short glimpse into what is planned as next steps. Most of the additions and features were purely because of our awesome community and the feedback that we received. Many thanks again from the whole team for the efforts and energy that players shared with us in improving the update further.

We hope you enjoyed the PTS phase as much as we did, and we are looking forward to the Lifeforms live release that is upcoming.

GF heeft twee tutorial video's gemaakt. In een derde video wil GF graag vragen van de communities beantwoorden, daarom heb ik zojuist een draadje geopend om deze feedback vanuit de .nl community te vergaren: Discussie topic - Lifeforms.

Tutorial 1


Tutorial 2


Tutorial 3

Informatie voor de benodigde populatie om een gebouw te upgraden ontbreekt. Terwijl aan een oplossing word gewerkt, kunnen we alvast een tabel delen met deze informatie.

Beste spelers,

Woensdag 24 augustus om 14.00 uur zal er een balans patch op de testservers worden toegepast, versie 9.0.3-beta 2

Levensvorm 9.03 – wijzigingen

Algemene uitleg
Dit is geen uitgebreide balancing update. De wijzigingen moeten enkele van de kleinere problemen met gebouwen en populatie vereisten aanpakken en enkele waardes die incorrect waren oplossen. Voor de bouwvoorwaarde voor het derde gebouw (tech gebouw) is het doel om de populatie en voedsel op een niveau te hebben waar je (indien volledig volgroeid en tevreden) het onmiddellijk kan gebruiken voor het eerste tech vak. De bouwvoorwaarde van het eerste conversie gebouw werden aangepast op basis van elke levensvorm, om elk de vereiste hoeveelheid populatie te geven (indien volledig volgroeid en tevreden) om het eerste level te bouwen. Het 11e Levensvorm gebouw had een redundante bouwvoorwaarde die aangepast zal worden voor elke Levensvorm.

Beste speler,

Dinsdag 23 augustus om 14.00 uur zullen de testservers een update krijgen, versie 9.0.3 - beta 2.



Changelog:



- Added Lifeform KRAKEN and Lifeform NEWTRON items of different rarities that shorten the time required for Lifeform buildings and researches.
- Added "?" buttons to the Lifeform research selection, which allow you to view the techinfo page of each research before selecting it.
- Added a short info to the Lifeform research page, which explains that Lifeform research becomes inactive if you drop below the required amount of population.
- Adjusted the Lifeform tutorial task and reward.
- Adjusted population to now always have the same growth rate regardless of server speed.
- Fixed several display issues for Lifeform buildings on the resource settings page.
- Fixed the the attacking fleets of the M.O.O.N.S. items not considering the corresponding server speed setting correctly.
- Fixed the event list overlapping the building queue when the "Below the content" option is selected in the display options.
- Fixed the production time of ships being recalculated when halving it with Dark Matter.
- Fixed food and population not using the shortened number variant on the resource settings page.
- Fixed receiving the wrong message when gaining a new title.
- Fixed active players occasionally being displayed as inactive.
- Fixed the requirements of Lifeform buildings also displaying Energy costs. This also fixes all population conversion buildings not displaying their population requirements.
- Fixed the button to start with DM showing up for Lifeform buildings with population requirements while all other requirements are fulfilled.
- Several changes in the back end.

Hopende jullie hiermee voldoende te hebben geinformeerd.

Jullie Ogame-team

Beste spelers,

Vandaag rond 14.30 uur is hotfix versie 9.0.2-pl6 er op gezet.


Changelog:
- Several back end changes

Waarschuwing: Het kan zijn dat sommige teksten niet goed worden weer gegeven, dit is bekend en word verholpen met versie 9.0.3

Beste Spelers,

Morgen 9 september om 14.00 uur zullen de testservers de update krijgen van versie 9.0.4

Changelog:
- Fixed some planets being unreachable after an account transfer.
- Fixed the lifeform species icon getting extended below the player class icon.
- Fixed researches occasionally being stuck.
- Fixed detailed info pages loading infinitely for researches on level 0 on colonies.
- Fixed the wrong decimal separators being used in several languages.
- Fixed the level of Plasma Technology not being displayed in the resource settings.
- Fixed an issue with Phalanx scan displaying speed changes when a tech affecting fleet speed was upgraded..
- Fixed Energy bonuses having double the effect.
- Fixed Honor Points being lost with an account transfer.
- Several Changes in the back end.

Ter informatie:

Wednesday, September 21 at 11:30 CEST, we will activate Lifeforms extension in some of the existent universes.


The selected universes are:
- OGame.de Vega (122)
- OGame.uk Vega (122)
- OGame.fr Wasat (123)
- OGame.es Sombrero (171)
- OGame.pl Universe 68



A few points to consider:

• The target Graveyard server for the mentioned universes will change from EN 300 to EN 301 (it is not possible to transfer accounts between LF and non-LF universes)
  
• New accounts registration will be closed for those universes
  

Best regards,
Your OGame Team